The Soviet Union learned its lesson about flying tanks too late, but still gave us an epic arch-enemy. The Soviet winged tank project not only existed, it was actually tested. The Toy Soldiers saga was one of the few works to pay homage to one of the craziest inventions of all time.

In 1940, engineer and designer Oleg Antonov was inspired. At some point between the birth of the idea and its final realization, someone should have stopped him, but since the times didn’t really allow for much compromise, the Soviets decided that everything they had done so far was reason enough to make the flying tank a reality.

The fact that mankind had been working on ways to hurt each other for thousands of years probably didn’t help, but as you can imagine, the flying tank seemed like an unthinkable and nonsensical concept. But the Soviets managed to make it work.

Antonov’s flying tank

Although from the outside, and in retrospect, the flying tank has become an object of derision, it must be admitted that the Soviets were not the only ones to try a similar idea, and in fact there was some logic to their approach. Dropping airborne troops sounds good, but often stronger support was needed.

The problem was that getting armoured vehicles to the right places, especially where there were no roads and no trains, was not exactly an easy task. Antonov’s idea was that if the armoured vehicles were airlifted, then dropped and glided to their destination, the battle was already put on hold.

Using the lightest tank, the T-60, Antonov designed a glide wing and wings that could be attached to the vehicle and once on the ground, could be easily removed. A rear-facing gun rotor served to steer the glider, allowing manoeuvring.

Two years after the Soviets first mooted the idea of a firefighter, the Antonov A-40 project was completed and the first tests began. To do this, a bomber towed and then dropped the plane, but shortly after take-off the Soviets discovered what you’ve probably been thinking since you started reading.

The only game brave enough to use the Antonov A-40

Although the weapons, ammunition and fuel had been removed from the tank, the excess weight was still too much for the plane, so after considerable effort to get it airborne, they were forced to let go to avoid a major disaster. To their surprise, the Antonov A-40 not only worked, but was able to glide to the ground and land. However, other problems eventually led to the abandonment of the project.

This is truly a marvel of military engineering that very few people know about. One that, surprisingly, has not received more attention or become part of popular science fiction culture. In fact, if it looks even remotely familiar, we have a video game to thank for it, the legendary Toy Soldiers, released on the Xbox 360, with a unique blend of strategy and turret defense.

Using miniatures and models, the impressive franchise, which launched in 2010, liked to show a different side of war conflicts, and capitalized on the sequel, Toy Soldiers: Cold War, which featured a variant of the Antonov A-40 in an epic battle with the flying tank as the tutorial’s nemesis.

In fact, Toy Soldiers has the distinct honor of being the only war game, other than mods, to pay homage to such a crazy idea as the Antonov A-40. If you’re at all interested in the series, and you should be, because these are truly great games, you can pick up the entire collection for less than $10 on Steam.

Source: 3djuegos